About

I have been a member of the Amazon Vine for many years.
There is an Amazon Vine Forum for members (or anyone as of now) to talk about what goes on in the Vine.
Not surprisingly, as most things in life tend to go, there are a group of regulars that haunt the Vine Forum. They will pounce on anyone who thinks differently than they do. They consider themselves the Gods of Vine. The Anointed. Sometimes they are just downright nasty, but most often, they use a tactic called devaluation. It's really no different than what pimps do to prostitutes; pimps make prostitutes feel damaged. Many pimps will do this by physically abusing prostitutes, but most of the Vine Anointed (Bullies) do it by shady superior speak.

Why do they do it? Because it is the basic form of human behavior. The desire for power over others. Even if it's through a keyboard.

The Amazon Vine Bullies feel they are better than everyone and will often imply that someone is lacking in intelligence if they don't hold the same beliefs the Vine Bullies hold.

After the election of Trump, these Bullies had a meltdown. They used every propaganda technique known. From inciting fear to dehumanizing to glittering generalities.

I have other things to do, believe me, and am frustrated that I am spending time creating an outlet to display the Amazon Vine Bully Contradictions and Devaluation of Diversity - however, this type of behavior is all over the internet and at the work place, schools, etc. So recognizing it and understanding it will help take away the superiority the status seekers seek, and help you understand that yes, people are nuts, but that doesn't mean that YOU are just because they say so. But WAIT! How do you  know you ARE NOT ACTUALLY NUTS?
Because they say one thing, and do another. They contradict themselves. And they don't really mean what they say. Or/And they criticize and demean you and call you the irrational one.

 To rise above the masses, the Anointed espouse views more "advanced" than the norm; they must "progress" beyond the Founders, and purify society of the prejudices and superstitions of traditions. They are "change agents."
Thomas Sowell quotes historians Will and Ariel Durant from their "Lessons of History:"
"No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."

3 comments:

  1. I only just found out about G being banned (off-site, when someone shared your blog), as I stopped using the forums back in 2014, just a few months after the queue system began. I can't say I'm sympathetic. She is the reason I left the forums, never to return. Her bullying of me was merciless and without reason, for I'd never done anything to her. I didn't even retaliate against the bullying, for two wrongs don't make a right. I simply took what I considered the best option available for ending it and removed myself from the equation, leaving the forums. So... the bullying history goes back at least to 2014. I still won't be returning to the forums, though. Too many of her friends are still there, and I do not have the emotional strength or resiliency to deal with potential personal attacks and bullying again.

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  2. I was so sorry to hear that you were banned from posting on Amazon, GuirkyGirl. I enjoyed your posts on the politics forum. You made me laugh. They've banned a bunch of other people in the last month or so from politics and your critics and the ones I'm sure complained about you because their liberal pricks, are gone. So a little justice.

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  3. I am a top 100 reviewer and Vine member. I have two secrets to my review success: 1. Never read other people's reviews before I post mine, and 2. AVOID the Vine discussion forum. On occasion I've made the mistake of posting innocent questions or suggestions in the Vine forum once in a blue moon, and if I don't say something according to the groupthink of the forum regulars, they pile on to ridicule me. I have experience designing and moderating web discussion forums, and I know that a big reason for this dynamic is because Amazon allows people to censor others posts by clicking yes/no whether it adds to the discussion. People don't use that button to answer whether something contributes to the discussion, but rather they use it to squash opinions that don't conform to the "platform position" of the retirees and housewives who spend all day socializing on the Vine forum. After enough votes the messages are hidden (these votes often come from multiple non-Vine proxy accounts of the regulars). Then what happens is that people with minority opinions hesitate to write because they don't feel good about getting down-voted and their message possibly becoming hidden (which some may perceive as embarrassment). The dynamic is very much like a high school clique. Amazon could solve this by changing the voting button to ask instead whether a message is violating policy, rather than being a popularity button, and/or limit the number of posts to a 5 per week max, so that posts become more informative rather than a way to form a social clique.

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